"
Which remark, considering the circumstances and other things, was
sufficiently typical for all purposes, as I thought at the time and
still think. You see I had come to the place where I could understand a
German soldier's national and racial point of view, though I doubt his
ability ever of understanding mine. To him, now, old John Burns of
Gettysburg, going out in his high, high hat and his long, long coat to
fight with the boys would never, could never be the heroic figure which
he is in the American imagination; he would have been a meddlesome
malefactor deserving of immediate death. For 1778 write it 1914, and
Molly Pitcher serving at the guns would have been in no better case
before a German court-martial. I doubt whether a Prussian Stonewall
Jackson would give orders to kill a French Barbara Frietchie, but
assuredly he would lock that venturesome old person up in a fortress
where she could not hoist her country's flag nor invite anybody to shoot
her gray head. For you must know that the German who ordinarily brims
over with that emotion which, lacking a better name for it, we call
sentiment, drains all the sentiment out of his soul when he takes his
gun in his hand and goes to war.
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